More than 808,000 Children of Immigrants Turn 18, Eligible to Vote Each Year

Nearly a million U.S.-born citizen children of immigrants are turning 18 each year and will be eligible to vote, according to an analysis of U.S. Census data issued this month by the Center for Immigration Studies.

In a short assessment of the overall totals of immigrants and their citizen children in the U.S., CIS’s Steven Camarota reports that in 2014 there were 42,235,749 immigrants in the U.S., and 16,773,337 U.S.-born children under the age of 18 had either an immigrant mother or father. This means, combined, there are are 59,009,086 immigrants and their U.S.-born children in the U.S.

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The analysis further highlights that each year 808,128 U.S-born children of immigrants turn 18 and, as citizens of the U.S., are eligible to vote.

Immigration activist groups have pointed to the newly voting-eligible U.S. citizen children as a ripe bloc to register and encourage to vote.

Included in that total is 503,718 children of immigrants from Latin America, 66,081 children of immigrants from English-speaking countries, and 42,163 children of immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries. Additionally about 124,295 of the U.S. citizen children were born to immigrants in poverty.

Earlier this month, for example, the Latino Victory Foundation and the National Partnership for New Americans launched an effort called the New American Democracy Campaign aimed at registering the citizen children of immigrants and encouraging eligible immigrants to naturalize and register to vote.